_Time_: "Getting Rich off Those Who Work for Free"

"That's because one of the most interesting questions in business has
become how much work people will do for free."

In a way, it's very amusing, as if the writer is pitching the
audience, don't think this article is about some granola crunchy
flower-child dreaming about living in harmony with one another - it's
really about the red-blooded capitalism of how big business can
exploit all those flower-children dreamers just waiting to be fleeced
with the right sales-pitch.

As usual, substantial critiques are to be found in some way off
the beaten path forum
marginalized comments:

Having arrived at your article, "Getting Rich Off Those Who Work for
Free", from an Open Source portal, I regret (a little) to inform you
the Free/Open Source software (FOSS) types are spurning your
association of FOSS with anarchy. And I must say that it is a very
poor comparison. Not only are the majority of FOSS developers not
working for free, there is a strong hierarchical structure in most
projects -- meritocritous to be sure, but strong nevertheless.

This also connects to the wager with Nick Carr on the topic. There's a certain mythology which is peddled widely,
and very hard to counteract, since those myths serve the
interests of the marketers.

The problem with democracy is not an inherently technological one. We
have all the technology we need right now. What we don't have is the
self-awareness necessary to govern ourselves in a manner consistent
with our stated values and ideals.

There is a great sig on floating around on Slashdot - don't know the source:
"In the 80's capitalism triumphed over communism, in the 90's it triumphed over democracy"

I do my share of digital sharecropping at Slashdot.
I do my share of testing Firefox.
I also help out at some other places when I can.

Last week I got invited to participate in a forum because the admin liked my style of comments at a place I hang out. So my writing has value to someone.

What is in it for me?

A great time waster for when I am busy waiting.
I can ask a few (even very) technical questions and get them answered.
I also get a few good laughs from the mozillazine forums.
But I see no cash or beer tap coming out of my computer.

At Technocrat you can get paid for any accepted article submitted.
I don't bother and have submitted (and had accepted - not hard) stuff anyway.

This comment:
"meritocritous to be sure"
This is not always the case - someone may have a great idea and plan, but doesn't mean they shouldn't move on and let others manage it. You won't a list of failed or forked projects? Evolution at work.

From http://www.calacanis.com/2006/07/18/everyones-gotta-eat-or-1-000-a-month-for-doing-what-youre/
"Before launching the new Netscape I realized that Reddit, NewsVine, Delicious, and DIGG were all driven by a small number of highly-active users"
At what point does some enterprising programmer write a bot that can get a $1,000 month at least for a while? Maybe setup the id to start with and let the bot do the work? The bot doesn't need to pass a Turing test, all it needs to do Eliza like is regurgitate on the userid's fave themes with the latest links.

Kropotkin's writing are a good read even if you disagree completely with his conclusions - his work on co-operation vs competition (from studying nature in Siberia) is welll written and interesting.

The question:
as I am likely to have a lot of free time soon, is the cash for comment offer invitation only?